About Me

Dr. Clyde Winters, has taught in the Chicago Public Schools for 36 years. He has taught Education and Linguistic Courses at Saint Xavier University-Chicago. As a teacher in the Chicago Public Schools Dr. Winters wrote State Standards in the 1990's for the Chicago Public School system and Common Core State Standards for Social Studies. He also wrote the 6th Grade World History Lesson Plans used in the CPS in 2000.

Thursday, July 17, 2008

Olmec/Mande Origin of Mayan Writing

Some researchers maintain that Mayan writing is of Mixe-Zoque origin. These researchers cite the Mixe-Zoque words for writing : [i]tunja and [i]haypa as if they have something to do with Mayan writing. These terms have nothing to do with Mayan writing.

But the Mande term for writing is clearly the source for the Mayan term for 'writing'.B. Stross (1973) mentions the Mayan tradition for a foreign origin of Mayan writing.

This idea is also confirmed by Mayan oral tradition mentioned by Tozzer ( 1941), and C.H. Brown (1991) that claimed that writing did not exist among the Proto-Maya.Terrence Kaufman has proposed that the Olmec spoke a Mixe-Zoquean speech and therefore the authors of Olmec writing were Mixe-Zoquean speakers.

This view fails to match the epigraphic evidence. The Olmec people spoke a Manding (Malinke-Bambara) language and not Zoquean.There is a clear African substratum for the origin of writing among the Maya (Wiener, 1922).

All the experts agree that the Olmec people gave the Maya people writing (Schele & Freidel, 1990; Soustelle, 1984). Mayanist also agree that the Proto-Maya term for writing was *c'ihb' or *c'ib'.

The Mayan /c/ is often pronounced like the hard Spanish /c/ and has a /s/ sound. Brown (1991) argues that *c'ihb may be the ancient Mayan term for writing but, it can not be Proto-Mayan because writing did not exist among the Maya until 600 B.C.

This was 1500 years after the break up of the Proto-Maya (Brown, 1991). This means that the Mayan term for writing was probably borrowed by the Maya from the inventors of the Mayan writing system.Tozzer (1941) supports the linguistic evidence that the Mayan language was introduced to the Maya by non-Mayan speakers.

Tozzer noted that the Yucatec Maya claimed that they got writing from a group of foreigners called Tutul Xiu from Nonoulco.The Tutul Xiu were probably Manding speaking Olmecs. The term Tutul Xiu, can be translated using Manding as follows:Tutul , "Very good subjects of the Order". Xiu , "The Shi (/the race)"."The Shis (who) are very good Subjects of the cult-Order".The term Shi, is probably related to the Manding term Si, which was also used as an ethnonym.

The Mayan term for writing is derived from the Manding term *se'be. Below are the various terms for writing used by the Manding/Mande people for writing.